


Sylva Vareska: Queen Regnant

by lurknomoar



Series: Bits and Pieces and Older Writings [5]
Category: Die Csárdásfürstin | The Gypsy Princess - Kalman/Stein/Jenbach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-11-07 18:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20821925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurknomoar/pseuds/lurknomoar
Summary: Sylva Vareska receives a surprise visit from her secret fiance's mother.





	Sylva Vareska: Queen Regnant

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely adore Die Csárdásfürstin, and I wanted to write the story where Anhilte (the duchess who secretly used to be a nightclub singer before she married into high society) is finally honest with Sylva (the nightclub singer who insists that she’s going to marry Anhilte’s son Edwin.) Anhilte can be performed and staged as a very interesting villain, but she’s mostly still a villain. I wanted a glimpse at the story where she treat Sylva like an equal, because after all, Sylva is her past and her future, the next generation of ambitious and brilliant nightclub singers

‘Are you going to tell me to leave your son alone?’ Sylva asked, deliberately using her haughtiest voice. ‘Again?’

The woman sitting opposite her did not answer, didn’t even move, just kept smiling that questioning, bemused smile. As if she wasn’t the one to call Sylva to the café in the first place. She got the feeling that trying to play the haughty diva may not have been the best bet, not when she was talking to someone who could effortlessly out-diva her. Still, she forged on.

‘You offered me money, and it didn’t work. You offered me an overseas contract, which is just a classier way to offer me money, but it didn’t work. You could give me a title, but I’m getting that anyway when I marry Edwin. So what else do you have to offer me?’

‘I can offer you my honest opinion,’ the Duchess said.

‘Which is that I should leave your son well enough alone.’

‘I would prefer that, yes,’ the Duchess conceded. ‘But go ahead and marry him if you must, a brief and scandalous marriage might not do much more harm than a long and scandalous love affair.’

‘Why do you assume he’d leave me?’ asked Sylva, and she heard the horrible uncertainty in her own voice. She knew a variety of very good reasons, most of which in the end came down to the fact that she was, for all her fame, a nightclub singer and him, a duke’s son.’

‘Oh, I’m not afraid he would leave you,’ retorted the Duchess Anhilte with a wry laugh. ‘I’m afraid you would leave him.’

‘What do you… why would I?’

‘Well. He’s a lovely boy. But for the likes of you, he’s dreadfully boring. What do you even like about him?’

_He __had __promised to marry me _Sylva almost said, before she realised how bad that would sound. You didn’t fall in love with men who promised to marry you, that was naïve and stupid, that’s how you ended up deserted and alone and in trouble, bad trouble, knocking at the door of a back-alley clinic to get it dealt with before someone noticed and you got kicked out of the choir. What did she love about Edwin? He sent her flowers, he said he loved her, he promised to marry her then took the promise back, then promised again. What else? He was handsome. Well, not that handsome, but he looked quite dashing in his tailored suits, his silk cravats, his soft leather gloves, he looked expensive. She loved to listen to him talk, and always found his anecdotes interesting because he came from a world so different from her own, a world of hunts with hunting dogs and thoroughbred horses, a world of castles with mirrored ballrooms. One by one, the things she had loved about him melted away into the empty mask of a rich boy indistinguishable from all the other rich boys who had professed their love to her until nothing remained but the dumb stubborn insistence that _he had promised._

‘I’m still going to marry him,’ she declared.

‘You go and do that, I’ve given up on trying to stop you,’ Anhilte sighed. ‘That’s not even what I’m here for, this time.’

She picked up her champagne glass and took a long drink from it.

‘As I said, keep stringing my son along if it amuses you. All I’m asking is, don’t quit the stage.’

‘Quitting the stage is the one thing that might make me respectable.’

‘Nothing can make you respectable. You can stop singing and become a loathsome parvenu, or keep singing and cause a delicious scandal. Nobody likes a parvenu, and everybody loves a scandal.’

Sylvia was still trying to formulate a response, but the duchess waved her silent.

‘I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’ve done it, sort of. For twenty or so years, I was a duchess. I got to play a prestigious, if unbearably boring role for quite a long time. It took a single remark from a spiteful idiot to take me down. Now for the next twenty years, I won’t be able to show my face in polite society. You don’t want to live this life.’

‘Are you seriously telling me I don’t want the life of a wealthy duchess?’ countered Sylva. ‘You must have forgotten what it’s like, having to choose between buying food and firewood, dancing on tables seven nights a week just to make a living. You spent too long living in a castle, drinking Tokaj and wearing trinkets like that one,’ added Sylva, nodding to the heavy diamond ring on Anhilte’s finger.

‘Oh, this,’ exclaimed Anhilte, as if she had forgotten the ring was still there. She probably had. ‘I wore far bigger stones when I was on stage.’

‘Those were made of glass.’

‘Yes, but who could tell? With the proper lighting, on the proper woman, the cheapest piece of tinfoil will look a priceless jewel. And off the stage…’ she looked down at the ring, lightless and dim on her soft pale hand, and yanked it off. ‘You can have this.’

‘And we’re back to where you’re paying me off,’ sighed Sylvia.

‘I’m not. And I remember being an Orpheum girl just fine. Sure, I don’t miss the cold or the long hours or the groping, but I do miss it, I miss the whole thing. I miss the headlights and the crowds and the music, I miss dancing, not the stiff solemn prancing that the upper classes dare call a waltz, but proper dancing. I miss being someone on my own terms, not on my husband’s. I was a promising young talent. Sure, half the people who liked me only liked me because they thought they had a chance to get under my petticoats, but they still paid the entry fee and they still called me a Queen, and not a Queen like the King's wife, no, not Queen Consort but Queen Regnant. Maybe if I had held out, if I had kept going, I could really have been something. But now, I’ll never know.’

‘Are you saying you want me to remain a performer out of sheer nostalgia?’

‘Well yes,’ conceded Anhilte. She looked tired, worn, but now that Sylvia had another, closer look at her, she looked younger than she expected. Like a woman who could still have five years of stage career in front of her, fifteen if she didn’t mind comedy roles. And suddenly, Sylvia wanted to share that stage with her.


End file.
